Mungedi drafted by WNBA’s Tulsa Shock

John Byrne /Nevada Athletics Nevada’s Mimi Mungedi towers over a Spartans’ player during a game on February 7 at Lawlor Events Center. Mungedi was selected in the third round of the WNBA Draf

Staff Report

From walk-on, to Mountain West Defensive Player of the Year, to Women’s National Basketball Association draftee. Former Nevada center Mimi Mungedi was selected by the Tulsa Shock with the 25th pick in the WNBA Draft on Thursday, April 16.

The Shock took the 6-foot-8 Gabon native with the first pick in the third round, making Mungedi just the second Wolf Pack player to be selected in the WNBA Draft (Tahnee Robinson was the first in 2011). Mungedi’s WNBA odyssey has been one for the ages. She didn’t pick up a basketball until she was 12 years old. Mungedi averaged a mere five minutes a game as a walk-on freshman at Nevada, before starting 11 games as a sophomore.

Then came her coming out party. Mungedi won back-to-back MWC Defensive Player of the Year awards her junior and senior season. She left her mark in the Nevada record books, setting single-seasons record in blocks (74) and career blocks (162).

Now Mungedi becomes the tallest player on the worst team in the WNBA, Tulsa, who finished 12-22 in 2014. In a Sagebrush profile story about Mimi published in 2012, she alluded that basketball was Mungedi’s destiny.

“God gave me these long legs and I felt like that’s what he wanted me to do,” she said.

The sports desk can be reached at euribe@sagebrush.unr.edu and on Twitter @SagebrushSports.